God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater_ Or, Pearls Before Swine - Kurt Vonnegut [25]
"I began to feel terror for the first time in many years," said the Senator, "and I told the doctor so.
" 'Good,' he said again. 'The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again. Eliot certainly has his wires crossed, but the inappropriate thing to which the short circuit has caused him to bring his sexual energies isn't necessarily such a very bad thing.'
" 'What is it?' I cried, thinking in spite of myself of Eliot stealing women's underwear, of Eliot snip-ping off locks of hair on subways, of Eliot as a Peeping Tom." The Senator from Indiana shuddered. " 'Tell me, Doctor—tell me the worst. Eliot is bringing his sexual energies to what?'
" 'To Utopia,' he said."
Frustration made Norman Mushari sneeze.
7
ELIOT'S EYELIDS were growing heavy as he read Get With Child a Mandrake Root. He was rumpling about in it at random, hoping to find by chance the words that were supposed to make Pharisees gnash their teeth. He found one place where a judge was damned for never having given his wife an orgasm, and another where an advertising executive in charge of a soap account got drunk, locked his apartment doors, and put on his mother's wedding dress. Eliot frowned, tried to think that that sort of thing was fair-to-middling Pharisee-baiting, failed to think SO.
He read now the account executive's fiancée's seduction of her father's chauffeur. Suggestively, she bit off the breast-pocket buttons of his uniform jacket. Eliot Rosewater fell fast asleep.
The telephone rang three times.
"This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"
"Mr. Rosewater—" said a fretful man, "you don't know me."
"Did someone tell you that mattered?"
"I'm nothing, Mr. Rosewater. I'm worse than nothing."
"Then God made a pretty bad mistake, didn't he?"
"He sure did when he made me."
"Maybe you brought your complaint to the right place."
"What kind of a place is it, anyway?"
"How did you happen to hear of us?"
"There's this big black and yellow sticker in the phone booth. Says, 'Don't Kill Yourself. Call the Rosewater Foundation,' and it's got your number." Such stickers were in every phone booth in the county, and in the back windows of the cars and trucks of most of the volunteer firemen, too. "You know what somebody's written right under that in pencil?"
"No."
"Says, 'Eliot Rosewater is a saint. He'll give you love and money. If you'd rather have the best piece of tail in southern Indiana, call Melissa.' And then it's got her number."
"You're a stranger in these parts?"
"I'm a stranger in all parts. But what are you anyway—some kind of religion?"
"Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist."
"What?"
"That's what I generally say when people insist I must have a religion. There happens to be such a sect, and I'm sure it's a good one. Foot-washing is practiced, and the ministers draw no pay. I wash my feet, and I draw no pay."
"I don't get it," said the caller.
"Just a way of trying to put you at ease, to let you know you don't have to be deadly serious with me. You don't happen to be a Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptist, do you?"
"Jesus, no."
"There are two hundred people who are, and sooner or later I'm going to say to one of them what I've just said to you." Eliot took a drink. "I live in dread of that moment—and it's sure to come."
"You sound like a drunk. It sounded like you just took a drink."
"Be that as it may—what can we do to help you?"
"Who the hell are you?"
"The Government."
"The what?"
"The Government. If I'm not a Church, and I still want to keep people from killing themselves, I must be the Government. Right?"
The man muttered something.
"Or the Community Chest," said Eliot.
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out."
"Maybe you think it's funny to put up signs about people who want to commit suicide."
"Are you about